X-Com 3: Apopcalypse (oooooldie)Love the X-Com series. I hope Firaxis does a replay on them. Wouldn't hurt Firaxis to be creative though. A new feature or two would be welcome. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" only goes that far.

Ghost Recon 2: Advanced Warfighter (X-Box 360)Ohmagawd! I finished this game after two days of random gameplay. Ridiculously easy, even on the hardest difficulty level. Must be one of those "geared for multiplayer" games.

Story was decent though. Badass Mexican rebels trying to nuke the US, so you guys better watch those wetbacks! :p

Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium WarsThe new faction introduced made me love this game, but the end sessions are insanely difficult. Also, playing NOD is annoying at times as they are depicted as bad guys in a cartoonish manner (unrealistic good guy / bad guy approach... Including cliche voice acting and then some).

But the game was neat nevertheless. The between session videos featured lots of celebrities, including a couple from Battlestar Galactica (the new series). Unfortunately the acting was poor at best and horrid at worst. The props looked ridiculous too.

Oh well. I loved the game. It is recommended to all those who enjoy games like Warcraft (not WoW), Starcraft and so on.

Starcraft and the expansion Brood War. My first introduction to RTS games, and I've never found one more fun. Infinite replay value. Plus the capability for player campaigns is rather nice (even if you can't have the flowing from level to level easily like the built in campaigns).

World of Warcraft. Huge game world. Can get boring at times, but if you enjoy your character and seeing the world, you'll enjoy the game. I had a character spend at least 2 months at the same level just because I wanted to see the world and explore. Made everyone look at me like I was nuts.

C&C Generals was a good one. Zero Hour helped add new content to make things interesting. Always wrecked the computers though, since the programmers never fixed a memory leak. Eventually your game would crash because you'd run out of memory. But it was still a fun game, if you saved often enough.

Tiberium Wars is a fun one as well. I went through it until the aliens invaded, then called it quits and haven't played since. Haaaaaard to beat. I'll probably go at it again some other time. I'm loving SC too much right now though.

Even though this is the computer games, I have to mention Chrono Trigger for the SNES. That was hands down the most fun I've ever had in a game. Great storyline, great replay value. When I first went through it, I was loving it. I still do. I wish other games could give me that same sense of wonder and adventure when I play them for the first time. That game is still one of the highlights of my youth.

Isn't there a problem that a huge number of mammoth tanks will NOT solve?*What? My credit card is empty? But see, there, the mammoth tank? I bet you will give me the stuff for free.*What? I only got 40 % of the votes? Who cares, I got the tanks, so hand me the presidential seat!*What? The guy drives a Ferrari and all the chicks dig him? Well, let's see how many dig me when I cruise through the neighborhood in my new Mammoth tank!

Ehm. Yup.

Anyways, Civ4 is a rather decent game. Lots of options, and one thing I consider both a boon and a curse: war is difficult. In all the previous Civilization games, you could just roll over the opposition, even Alpha Centauri supported 'shoot first, ask later'. Not so Civilization 4 - cities are difficult to take, sieges protracted, army expensive, and longbowmen holed up in a city on a hill just a plain pain in the ass. And, save-loading doesn't work (the horror! the horror!).Also, you cannot use roads on your opponent's territory, meaning that your army moves like a slug. I don't know who is going to keep my war elephant from using the road, but... Sid thought it would be funnier so.

What does it mean for the gamer? More thinking, first. Plus, restarting a game when he's stuck on a crappy piece of the continent with a computer on far superior ground, usually.

Other than that, the culture system is interesting, the diplomacy OK (watch out for the disbelievers! You're bound to have bad relationships with people of a different faith) and the social order system (divided into Government, Legal, Labor, Religion...) quite alright. A certain bias is visible, as Representative and Universal Suffrage systems are far superior in game-mechanics to Monarchy and Police States...

All in all: Echo recommends.

Logged

"Captain, the buttocks are moving from the pink into the red and purple spectrum! We cannot maintain this rate of spanking any longer!"

C&C Generals was a good one. Zero Hour helped add new content to make things interesting. Always wrecked the computers though, since the programmers never fixed a memory leak. Eventually your game would crash because you'd run out of memory. But it was still a fun game, if you saved often enough.

You might not have played red alert/red alert 2, then.

I prefer to play RA in 680x480 after spending an hour to install it on vista (resolving backwards compatibility issues (it doesn't help that I have a french language version)) than to play generals. RA2 was a pretty improvement on the first one, too, and multiplayer play is one of the most fun from any multiplayer RTS, especially if you get the yuri's revenge expansion.

They both have vastly superior balance, mechanics and playability over Generals, in my opinion. I don't think I've ever been as disappointed with any game as generals, to be honest.

Might have to rent Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars to see if the spirit of C&C is back, because I felt it was definitely lost in generals.

Logged

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."-Philip K. Dick

Lately: A lot of online Ghost Recon. Some of the multiplayer levels are fun, but others are only grenade throwing contests, where 14 year olds have practiced throwing from a safe location to the spawn locations of the enemy.

*Spawn*

*DIE*

*Spawn*

*DIE*

Yeah, nuff said.

The single player scenarios of both Ghost Recon 1 and 2 are cool. Better than the Splinter Cell scenarios, IMHO.

I don't play PC games so much, I'm a PS2 girl. (And the fact that my PC isn't machine enough to run most games doesn't help.)

Right now I'm in the middle of Final Fantasy IX. Gorgeous game, and an engaging story so far. Course, that's the cartoony looking one, may not be for everyone.

Recently finished Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner. Fairly odd, fairly creepy, very high up on the "FTW" meter. Didn't have a clue what was going on until the final twenty minutes of the game. But it was pretty and creepy and fed my odd obsession for monster collecting, so I liked it.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney on DS is interesting too. Sort of like a console-based logic puzzle. And all the characters are insanely full of special. It's funny, but you have to put a lot of thought into it.

1. Hearts of Irons II - The ultimate WWII game, in my opinion. Grand strategy level, and the ability to play any country in the world adds a lot - being able to militarize, say Turkey, and try to take over the Middle East is almost as much fun as actually recreating history. The format works well, and the real-time element never seems to go too quickly.

2. Fantasy General - A much older game; basically the fantasy equivalent of Panzer General. It does, however, boast more variety, as well as a magic system. Plus, leading armies of werebears and steampunk-like mechs against the sinister Shadowlord never gets old.

3. God of Thunder - An even older game, now available as Freeware (http://liberatedgames.com/game.php?game_id=110). Playing as Thor is, in itself, amusing, but the game boasts some humour of its own, as well as fine puzzles and solid action.